Robin Rhode

Robin Rhode, who was born in 1976 in Cape Town and now lives in Berlin, has made a name for himself in the past few years on account of his unconventional artistic work. His oeuvre centers on performances that have evolved from his experiences as a high-school student growing in the Johannesburg suburbs, supplemented by street culture (sports, music, fashion, and survival skills) that he likes to mingle with the process of “making art”.

STILLS FROM SKATEBOARD

…" I have been working extensively with video and performance art by alluding to formalism while actually engaging with very gritty and personal subject matter. I am as serious about my subject – a personal experience of rough Johannesburg neighbourhoods and its criminal subculture – as I am about making art. These experiences have inspired me to commit myself to the processes required in the making of contemporary art. My sculptural pieces have involved the construction of barcoding as a form of colloquial or encoded subcultural language. My interactive pieces can be seen as an attempt to foreground the way objects functions as signs before people see them as material things."…